Group And Group Development

880 Words2 Pages

Group and team development
Part 1- Group development
All the parties involved; The Woodson foundation, the school district and the NCPIE all ultimately have the same goal, which is to have a successful school system in the D.C. area. To start off, I would first define a group to have a better understanding of what these three parties want to build to know where they stand in the development stage. The text defines a group as “two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who have come together to achieve particular objectives.” (Robbins 272), and to be more specific this group would be a formal group as they are brought together for a task/ project. There are five stages of group development which are; forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. With this group and from my understanding of where they are from reading the case, I would conclude that they are in the storming stage. The reason I came to the conclusion is because from the textbook’s definition of forming which is when “great deal of uncertainty about the group’s purpose, structure, and leadership” (Robbins 275) and from the case study it shows that all the parties do understand that they are part of the group and know what their purpose is, so they have completed that stage. Norming is the third stage and it is described as a stage where there is cohesiveness and a strong relationship between the group members. From what I have read in the case with the worries from the School district that the Woodson foundation will have all the power and the NCPIE believing that the school district is going to eat up all the money, there isn’t yet cohesiveness in the group. This is why I say they are in the storming stage, because even though they unde...

... middle of paper ...

...wards those changes.
Part 4- Reflection
The group has already completed the forming stage and is already in the storming stage meaning they are at this point figuring out the members and coming across conflicts. To combat these conflicts to be able to achieve overall success and get through the stages communication has to be key. Individual interest needs to be eliminated for the overall interest of the group, and individual issues or issues towards other group members and their parties have to be addressed in this stage. Due to the fact that all parties in the group do have the common goal of wanting better scores for the students, I believe this group can be successful as long as they communicate successfully.

Source:
Organizational Behavior [VitalSouce bookshelf version]. Retrieved from http://devry.vitalsource.com/books/9781269551120/id/bm2lev2sec14

Open Document